Born on the Fourth Day of Bloom
by Drogna
Summary: The COG is reduced to a remnant of civilization on Azura and a settlement at Anvil's Gate, medical emergencies are not something that they can deal with anymore, so when Baird suffers a life threatening injury no one thinks he's going to make it. Clearly no one reckoned with Delta.


Born on the Fourth Day of Bloom

AN: This is set a little while after the end of GoW3, but is a sequel to my other fic "Saving Corporal Baird". Whilst we don't know the exact details of the COG calendar, Bloom is probably the 5th month of the year but they probably also have different national days. The title just seemed to work.

* * *

Corporal Damon Baird's workshop was any mechanic or engineer's wet dream. It had taken him a few days after the final destruction of the Lambent to locate a suitable area for him to use as his workshop, but he'd chosen carefully. It was a building away from the main tower, but close enough that he could walk back to the centre of the island. It had large rooms with double doors that were clearly supposed to admit vehicles. There were even lifts and inspection pits, suggesting this was where vehicle maintenance was done on Azura or perhaps where new military vehicles were developed. There were also areas that looked as if they'd been technical labs of some kind. It was well stocked with tools, computers and machinery that would help him in his work. In short, it was perfect.

Lieutenant Anya Stroud knew that they were going to be requiring Baird's skills a lot in the days to come, so she'd been one hundred percent behind Baird finding somewhere suitable to set up shop. As Stroud had ended up in charge of the logistics of the island of Azura, no one questioned Baird grabbing the entirety of a small building as his own. Plus, Baird was Delta, and Delta had just helped to save the planet. People were predisposed to letting him get away with things, and it wasn't as if they were short on space.

Baird's workshop was where he worked, slept and occasionally ate. He had a room assigned to him in the main block of Azura's palatial accommodation, but he preferred crashing out in the small side room that he'd designated as his office. It felt much more like home than the fake grandeur of the rest of Azura's living quarters.

Azura had been a top secret military base, home to the world's best scientists and thinkers. They had lived in luxury whilst the rest of the planet went to hell, fighting more and more hopeless battles against ever increasing opposition. It was supposed to be an impenetrable fortress, protected by an artificial storm called a Maelstrom Barrier, but the Locust Queen had found a way in. Things had gone badly for the inhabitants from that point onwards, but Delta had found their way to the island and Sergeant Marcus Fenix had personally killed the Locust Queen. Unfortunately his father, Adam Fenix, had been the lead scientist on Azura and whilst he'd been kept alive by the Queen so that he could continue his research, his own final solution to the Lambent problem resulted in his death.

One of the last things that Marcus' father had said to him was that he should make a go of it with Anya and embrace the new dawn. So Marcus had taken that pretty seriously and he and Anya had set up a small council of advisors, including Baird, to get things moving. That had been several months ago now and despite the fact that they were no longer at war, the pace of life hadn't slowed for Baird one bit. Rebuilding a war torn population took time and resources; the first they had in plentiful supply, the second considerably less so.

Baird's days were currently spent trying to keep the existing vehicles and technology that they had running by cannibalising other things to get parts and materials. Salvage was valuable stuff on the island of Azura and none of it would be wasted. He had generators that wouldn't run on dead imulsion and vehicles that, in less desperate times, he'd have scrapped but couldn't because they were all that they had. There were ships that needed maintenance and communications equipment that needed constant, careful nursing to make it work. Keeping in contact with the mainland and the other remnant of the human population at Anvil Gate was one of the ways that they still knew that they were some kind of civilization.

This was one of the reasons that Baird's workshop looked like a cross between a scrapyard and the lab of a rocket scientist. They had one man on the island who could work on both Armadillo's and radio equipment and that was Baird. He had a few assistants who'd been working in the motor pool, or as engineers on board a ship, but no one could invent new ways of using old technology like Baird could. No one had his sharp mind or genius for technical problem solving.

Anvil Gate had promised to send some more of the Engineering Corp to Azura, but they couldn't really spare the manpower either. They also had a larger civilian population to take care of and therefore Hoffman was loath to lose them to the smaller outpost on Azura. So Baird's days were full. He delegated what he could and there still weren't enough hours in the day.

He knew things were bad when he greeted the news that a supply of coffee had been found in the kitchen's stores with undisguised joy and a good measure of relief. He'd really missed coffee and it would certainly help him to get through the all-nighters that he'd regularly been pulling ever since his workshop opened its doors. His team of mechanics and engineers even went as far as to steal a coffee machine from one of the common rooms, they regarded it as that important. It was installed in a corner of the workshop, and no one said anything about its disappearance within earshot of Baird's team. That was just the way things were if you continued to want hot water in the showers and hot food on the table.

Today, Baird was on about his fifth cup of coffee and up to his elbows in the guts of a Packhorse when Augustus Cole strode in through the open doors.

"Hey, baby!" shouted the former Thrashball star. "You got plans for lunch? 'Cos I haven't seen you in the Mess Hall for a couple of days."

"Yeah, the last Packhorse on the island died and I'm still trying to resuscitate it," said Baird. "I haven't had time to stop." His traitorous stomach growled despite himself at the mention of food. He'd grabbed a ration pack at some point over the last couple of days but he couldn't remember exactly when.

"Yeah, well you won't do anyone any good by dropping dead from starvation," said Cole. "Get your ass down here."

"You're not the boss of me," retorted Baird. "I've got repair jobs backing up round the block because of this stupid piece of junk." He grabbed an already oily rag, wiped his even more oily hands on it and kicked the tyre of the Packhorse.

"Come on, Damon. You know I'm not leaving until you come too," said Cole.

"I can't. We've got a senior staff meeting this afternoon and I need to get enough done that I can leave the rest to what I laughingly refer to as "my team" while I'm listening to Marcus drone on about Gorasni politics and supplies of powdered milk for a couple of hours," said Baird.

He was exaggerating for effect, but only a little. The last staff meeting had indeed involved discussions on the Gorasni's internal power struggles and their dwindling stores of powdered milk. Both of these things were considered to be bad, but Baird couldn't remember why they were of a level that needed to be raised at the Azura senior staff meeting. It still scared him a little that he was considered part of that senior staff, but he guessed that was a measure of just how bizarre, weird and totally screwed up the post-war Sera was.

Cole was unimpressed by his rant in any case. "Yeah, we're all under pressure, but like I said, you still need to eat and coffee ain't a substitute for real food. You look like shit, baby."

Baird gave a heavy sigh. "Okay, I give in. I could do with something to eat. Let's get going so that I can get something done before this week's foray into the pointless."

He wiped his hands a bit more thoroughly and stowed his tools. As he left he shouted out a few instructions to his right hand woman, Corporal Cordelia Brennan. She was quite capable of handling the rest of the stuff that had come into the workshop over the last few days, but still pretty inexperienced compared to Baird. He was doing his best to train people up, but they didn't have the time to do it properly. It was on the job learning or nothing at the moment.

Baird stepped out into the sunlight and blinked tiredly. He'd been inside so long that the light was hurting his eyes just from stepping outside. He could do with some sleep more than food to be honest, but he'd settle for eating now. He trailed behind Cole towards the central buildings of the island, passing Gears repairing the damage caused by the last battle for Sera. They didn't need buildings falling on anyone, and Azura had been built to house a few hundred scientists with vast amounts of lab space. No one had ever really considered that it might need to accommodate a few thousand Gears and their Gorasni allies, with all the facilities that went along with that.

Cole had been assigned to head-up the building crews because he was kind of good at getting people to do things. He also liked the idea of using his hands and didn't mind taking directions from one of the two Engineering Corp Gears that were more used to building defensive earthworks or latrines than actual buildings. They still knew more about putting up buildings than anyone else on the island and were probably just as busy as Baird.

The mess hall was as ornate as the rest of the island and always busy. It was a huge hall, set out with carved wooden tables, with expensive looking matching chairs. This had been where the scientists had come to eat and discuss their important work, and like everything on Azura it was supposed to be the height of comfort and luxury. Having had several hundred Gears eating in it, day in day out for the last few weeks, it wasn't looking quite as good as it probably once had. The bullet holes in the plaster of the walls kind of lowered the general tone of the place as well.

Baird and Cole grabbed a tray each and filled them with plates of the dish of the day, which looked to be meat stew of some kind. When Anya had started looking into how she was going to feed the Gears who were now living on Azura, she had started with Azura's kitchens. There she had located huge freezers full of produce and animal carcasses, waiting to be butchered and served to the island's scientists. There was enough food to last the former inhabitants of Azura for months, maybe even years for some things, and that was before they tackled the supplies of canned goods. Baird had heard that a team of Gears had nearly got lost in one of the store rooms, just trying to inventory everything that they had found.

It was all useful, and most of the Gears hadn't eaten like this for several years, but Anya was fond of pointing out that once it was gone, it was gone. They needed to get farms up and running so that they could replace their stocks and Azura wasn't a big island. It would do for now, but anyone planning to live on Azura would still mostly be reliant on the mainland for food. The main reason that they needed Azura at the moment was because it had the highest level of technology anywhere on Sera and the remnants of the COG weren't about to give that up. Azura might hold the key to preventing Sera from descending into the dark ages again.

Baird hoped so because he'd really miss hot water and central heating if Sera lost its technology. Not to mention that fixing technology was pretty much his main reason for existing at the moment. If he couldn't fix stuff then he didn't know what he was good for. He sure as hell wasn't a farmer, as he'd proved on their recent cruise aboard CNV Sovereign. He poked at the stew.

"Couldn't we for once just have a steak?" said Baird.

"Not until we can get some cows on the island," said Cole. "This is the best way of getting the most out of the meat we found in the deep freeze. It's a damn sight better than we've had for a while now."

"I know," said Baird. "But a guy can dream. How's the rebuilding going?"

"Pretty well. We're clearing the rubble from the Maelstrom tower pretty quickly. There's still most of the building left under it all. Hey, I saw Sam today. She's got command of the southern patrols at the moment," said Cole.

"Huh," was all Baird could manage between mouthfuls. He was going for disinterested, but somehow he never quite pulled off the right tone when Sam was mentioned. He still didn't know how he felt about Samantha Byrne, the shorthaired, brunette Kashkuri Gear with a gift for biting sarcasm. He regarded her as a friend that he could trade barbs with, but sometimes they both took that a bit too far. He definitely wasn't looking for a relationship at the moment, and he doubted that she was either so he wasn't sure why he kept thinking about her so much.

"Carmine's hooked up with some girl from Beta squad. By all accounts it's looking serious," said Cole.

"How the hell do you hear all this stuff?" asked Baird.

"I just talk to people," said Cole. "You should try it some time."

"Huh," said Baird, again. "Last time I tried that I think I got slapped."

"I said talk, not insult. You need to cultivate your social side, baby. Times are changing around here and we're all going to have to get along on this island."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can just stay in my workshop and let people bring me stuff to fix. It seems to work pretty well right now. Come on Cole, stop yapping and eat up, we've got Anya's meeting to get to and you know how she gets if we're late."

Cole just gave him a look, but did at least concentrate on eating and not trying to impart the latest island gossip to his friend. Baird knew that Cole didn't approve of his current lifestyle. The ex-thrashball player could mother-hen with the best of them, but right now Baird didn't have much choice when it came to working hours. Cole did know that too. Baird would have loved to get more sleep and eat his meals at regular intervals, but Azura needed to be kept running and apparently Baird was important in that equation.

* * *

The meeting wasn't actually as dull as Baird had feared it might be, but that was because it put the fear of god into him instead. That was pretty much what life had been like for the past eighteen years, so it didn't faze as much as it would have fazed someone who hadn't been at war for all that time. Being a Gear was all about large periods of extreme boredom, punctuated with moments of sheer terror.

The map that Anya displayed for them was enough to make Baird wish for a Grub attack. Grubs they could stop, this was a force of nature and it was heading right for their island paradise.

"We've got a storm coming in," said Anya. "A big one. Which is a problem because we've got building work that needs to be secured and boats out. Just to add to the fun, the facilities on this island don't include storm shelters because no one ever expected the Maelstrom Barrier to be down and actually let a real storm get close to the island."

"We're sure?" asked Marcus.

"Yeah, about the only thing the Hammer of Dawn satellites are good for is weather mapping," said Anya.

"Great," said Baird. "And we just started getting this place back together. What time's it going to hit?"

"Tonight, probably before midnight but that's only an estimate," said Anya. "I've already recalled the fishing fleet. They should all make it back or be clear enough that it won't hit them too badly, but we need to start battening down the hatches here and finding somewhere safe for everyone to ride it out."

"There's the tunnels," said Marcus.

"Is it safe down there?" asked Cole. "There was a fair bit of damage."

"Should be. We cleared enough of the rubble to get a path to the docks," said Amy Sakuri, one of the building engineers. "I'll give it a good inspection and we can make sure it's sealed to the elements. I'll need some manpower though."

"Not a problem," said Cole. "My guys and girls were nearly done with the Maelstrom tower clearance anyway."

Sakuri nodded. "Okay, but we'll have to get the scaffolding down from the accommodation block first. If it gets blown down it'll just cause more damage."

"And I'll get as many of our vehicles under cover as I can," said Baird. "I don't want our last Packhorse being hit by a tree or something. We really don't need any more repairs added to the list."

"Anything else we should worry about?" asked Marcus, looking at Baird.

"The communications array. I can't see that surviving intact if this is going to be as bad as we think, but there isn't much we can do about that. It has to be up high or we won't get a signal out. It took us a day to get the big dish up there and that was with a team of seven of us. There's nowhere for it to go even if we could get it down in time. You might want to warn people that they probably won't be hearing from us for a while after this hits," said Baird. "The overhead power lines will probably go down too, but there aren't many of them so they won't be too difficult to fix. You might want to get any Ravens that we've got the hell out of here."

"Already gone," said Anya.

They only had a couple anyway and they were mostly running shuttles between Anvil Gate and Azura, although not too many until the fuel situation was sorted out. They were lucky they had any helicopters left at all after the battle for Azura.

The meeting broke up a few minutes later after everyone had been assigned their tasks. Baird didn't need to be told twice to get anything breakable under cover. He hadn't spent this long fixing all the tech in Azura to have it trashed again. He really did not need Mother Nature throwing her might at him right now, he was already at full stretch.

He headed back to his workshop and began shouting at people to move stuff inside, then went out himself to get a couple of rat bikes that had been parked up outside. He hadn't ridden a bike in a while and one of them was Sam's pride and joy, so he was extra careful to make sure he took his time. Another couple of his guys had gone to bring in the only Armadillo on the island, and he rounded the corner of the building just as they pulled up in the courtyard outside.

"Hey, boss," said Cody Quayle, a very junior mechanic from the original Vectes' motor pool. "The Armadillo's too big to get under cover."

"Glad we've got your genius to tell us that, Quayle. Get some webbing and we'll lash it down. Tie it to those pylons there," said Baird, as he pushed the rat bike into the shop. "Get a move on people, we haven't got all day. We're going to need to get boards over all the windows. There's too much breakable stuff in here and I don't want to find all my hard work on the Pack's been undone because you lot forgot to put enough nails in."

There were a few mumbled "yes, boss" from around the room. No one wanted to suffer Baird's wrath. He wondered why any of them stuck around, usually his command style came in two forms abrasive and extremely abrasive.

He headed back out to get the second rat bike and met Sam coming in the opposite direction, already taking care of the bike.

"I heard you needed all hands to shut up the workshop," said Sam. "Thought I'd save you the bother of bringing this one round too."

"Uh, thanks," said Baird. "I've got yours inside already. You didn't tell me that the clutch was sticking again."

Sam shrugged. "I thought you had enough on your plate for the moment. I heard the Pack' died."

"Not dead yet," replied Baird. "I'll get it running again, but it's going to take some serious work."

The Packhorse was pretty important to the island. After the fire fight for Azura, the roads were pretty bad and the Packhorse was one of the larger vehicles that could manage the difficult terrain. It was mainly used for moving supplies around and transporting fish from the boats. They'd pressed a few other smaller vehicles into service since it broke down, but everything was taking twice as long as usual because of it. They couldn't afford manpower to be tied up like that, so if Baird couldn't get the vehicle up and running then it was going to cause a lot of inconvenience.

"Is that why you look like shit?" asked the Kashkuri Gear.

"Did Cole send you?" he asked. The ex-thrashball player had already told him that once today.

"Is he the only one allowed to comment on the fact that you're working too hard?"

"Someone's got to keep this island running," replied Baird.

"I thought that's what Anya was doing," said Sam.

"Well she wouldn't be if I didn't make sure that all the mechanical stuff was kept running. Every time something breaks on this damn island, it's me they come running to not Lieutenant Stroud."

"Yeah, which was sort of my point," said Sam. "Maybe you should take a break once in a while and get some proper down time."

"Yeah, I should just kick back and go get a suntan on the beach," said Baird. "I knew I was doing something wrong."

"You know what, Baird? I don't give a rat's arse," said Sam. "I was just trying to make sure you weren't killing yourself, but hey, if you want to work until you drop, who am I to stop you? I've got better things to do than stand here and argue with arrogant arseholes."

Sam thrust the bike in Baird's direction and stalked off towards where the building crews were getting the underground tunnels ready for habitation as storm shelters. Baird swallowed the need to shout a retort at her retreating form, shook his head and turned back to getting the bike into the shop.

* * *

Marcus had his hands full over the next few hours. The wind was beginning to rise and the storm was getting closer. The sun was setting and dusk had descended over the island as the weather worsened. The skies opened a moment later and it began to rain.

He'd already been round the island once in an ATV, checking on the various posts that were in the process of securing buildings and other assets. Now he was chasing the last of the personnel into the shelter of the tunnels before they boarded themselves in for the night.

"Everyone into the tunnels," he shouted, doing his last rounds of the people dragging the last of their supplies into the tunnel mouth. He could see Anya, doing the same a couple of feet away. The rain was lashing at them and he was longing to get inside in the dry.

Anya followed the final Gears in and Marcus dragged the first of the double doors across. "Is that everyone?" he shouted over the wind.

"I think so," said Anya. She peered out at the empty courtyard. There was a flash of lightning and a few moments later, a rumble of thunder in the distance.

Cole came running up behind them, looking worried. "Hey, has Baird come through here?"

"I saw his team, I thought he was with them," said Anya.

"No, they left him finishing up in the workshop," said Cole.

"Damn it," said Marcus. He watched the way that the wind whipped at the trees around the courtyard. A piece of corrugated iron roofing blew across the ground at some speed. "He's going to get himself killed." He reached for his radio. "Baird? Come in, this is Marcus." He gave it a second and got no answer. "Baird, can you hear me?"

There was a lot of static but no answer from their squad mate.


End file.
